How to turn your physics book into a capacitor!
A page by Devin Boyer

The Theory - The Finished Product - The Tools, The Plan - Parallel Circuits - Series Circuits - Bibliography

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The Finished Product

After several hours of cutting aluminum foil, and stuffing my text book, I was ready to get to work. 60 sheets of foil occupied chapters 31, 32, 33, and 34. Although I originally intended to put many more sheets into the design, at this point the book's bindings began to bulge prophetically.


The finished product

The ends of alternating plates where left hanging out of the book, and rolled rather inexpertly together to make two sets of plates.


Close-up of the end-roll

A cheap multimeter was used to check to make sure that the two sides were not inadvertently conducting. Satisfied, I measured the capacitance of my final product, and found it to be .42 uF.


Measuring the capacitance (uF) of the physics book

This value is very close to the calculated value of .47 uF.

For the size of the capacitor, this is a very dismal number. For comparison, I found a common discrete capacitor rated at twice what my book is, about .9 uF. Modern electronics have come a long way from Leyden jars.


A tale of two capacitors